Havana - When legendary Cuban musician Chucho Valdes enters the old piano repair shop in the heart of Havana, Irishmen Ciaran Ryan and Alex Jeffers cannot hide their broad smiles.
What started as an Irish volunteer project to help Cuba repair pianos, and train specialists, has taken on a dimension that would have been hard to imagine in 2006. At that time, the music-lovers had started looking for resources in Ireland and for ways of getting them to Havana.
Thanks to the initiative known as Una Corda (One String), countless Irish tourists have hauled parts for pianos in their luggage as well as tools to repair instruments in official Cuban institutions and those in private property.
'Over 200 kilogrammes of material,' Ryan says with a mixture of surprise and pleasure.
He is already thinking of expanding the project to a violin workshop and even 'to cinema and art, like sculpture.'
All the volunteers work in the Irish musical instrument sector where they gather parts and tools, strings or anything that could come in handy and put them into packages.
When an Irish tourist contacts the Cuban embassy to request a visa, officials tell them about the possibility of taking one of those packages to Havana, where another project official collects the goods at their hotel. The Cuban Ministry of Culture supports the initiative.
Brian Hopper and his friends from the Irish Photographic Society arrived in Cuba with packages for Una Corda, and they could not resist the temptation of going along to see the project at work for themselves.
'We find it very interesting. We heard on the radio in Ireland that they were looking for people to bring strings, chords and they were asking everybody to take a package. So we contacted Una Corda,' he says.
As he speaks, Hopper takes photographs of his surroundings which with an old, dilapidated, dust-laden piano indeed has the stuff for a good picture.
So far, donations of around 10,000 euros (nearly 13,000 dollars) have been received and will be boosted shortly by another 9,000 euros. They will used to fix a workshop where pianos were repaired before the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and which still has the machinery from that era.
To help secure more funds, Chucho Valdes is set to give two concerts in Dublin in late July.
'It is vital, it is a very beautiful idea and this work from the comrades in Ireland of making donations for piano repairs is extremely important,' Valdes said, adding, he would not hesitate to contribute to the project with his own music
'They told me about the idea, and I told them they can count on me right away. I mean, I have 10 fingers. If I had 20 they could also count on 20,' he joked.
On a more serious note, Valdes, 67, emphasized another aspect of the initiative namely, 'Creating the bases at school to train not just tuners, but also mechanics, technicians, specialists in repairs and tuning.'
'It is a tremendous contribution,' he said.
With the help of such big names, Ciaran Ryan is nearing his project's more spiritual goal, which is 'to encourage closer contact between the two countries.'
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